1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a relay apparatus to relay communication between a plurality of apparatuses and at least one communication terminal connected to different networks, an information processing system, and a computer-readable program storing a program controlling relaying communication between apparatuses and at least one terminal.
2. Background Art
In homes and companies, local networks, independent of a global network such as the Internet, are configured to communicate data safely within the homes and companies. These local networks may include, for example, a fire wall as security measures to prohibit a direct access to the local networks from the global network, in which an access from the global network to the local networks is restricted such as prohibited.
With the wide use of portable terminals such as smart phones, there is a demand to access the in-house local networks from the global network to use information stored in the offices outside.
FIG. 1 shows one configuration to achieve such demand. FIG. 1 shows a network environment composed of a global network 10 and a local network 11 in which a fire wall 12 is disposed between the global network 10 and the local network 11. The fire wall 12 could be software, hardware or a combination of software and hardware that controls communication between a specific network and an external environment such as external network to protect safety of apparatuses connected to the specific network.
In the network environment of FIG. 1, a portable terminal 13 is connect-able to the global network 10, and a file server 14 for storing and managing files is connected to the local network 11. Further, the global network 10 is connected to a file server 15 provided with a large memory space to store and manage a large number of files.
In the configuration of FIG. 1, the files stored in the file server 14 can be copied and stored in the file server 15. The portable terminal 13 can access the file server 15 via a base station 16 to access such copies of files.
However, in the configuration of FIG. 1, information is stored on the global network 10, which is vulnerable to security attacks. Therefore, instead of the file server 15, a relay server 17 can be disposed as shown in FIG. 2.
The relay server 17 relays communication between the portable terminal 13 and the file server 14. Therefore, the relay server 17 receives a request from the portable terminal 13 and transmits the received request to the file server 14 on the local network 11. Then, the relay server 17 receives a process result from the file server 14 and transmits the process result to the portable terminal 13.
FIG. 3 illustrates a system configuration having the relay server 17 disposed on a network system in which files in the portable terminal 13 are uploaded to a plurality of servers such as file servers 14 and 18. The relay server 17 is connected to the global network 10, and further, a local network 11a of an entity (office or site) A, a local network 11b of an entity B, and a 3G line 19 as are connected to the global network 10. The 3G line 19 is a communication network for portable phones.
Further, fire walls 12a, 12b and 12c are disposed between the global network 10 and the local networks 11a and 11b, and the 3G line 19 as security measures. The file server 14 is connected to the local network 11a, the file server 18 is connected to the local network 11b, and the portable terminal 13 is connected to the 3G line 19 via the base station 16.
In this system configuration, the user may upload the file to the file servers as follows. (1) The portable terminal 13 is connected to the file server 14 via the relay server 17. (2) A file in the portable terminal 13 is transmitted to the file server 14 via the relay server 17. (3) The portable terminal 13 is disconnected from the file server 14, and the portable terminal 13 is connected to the file server 18 via the relay server 17. (4) A file in the portable terminal 13 is transmitted to the file server 14 via the relay server 18.
However, in this system configuration, the user may need to conduct a connection process to each one of file servers using the portable terminal and then transmits a file, which is not so convenient for the user due to such user operations.